Belfast city is BUZZING with colour.
Can you believe it? There are blossoms on the horse chestnut trees!
My Grandchildren planted tulip bulbs and just look at them now.
Just look at these marvellous creations.
Birds are so clever, resourceful……….and artistic too.
- Last week (Thursday) we had a very cold, but enjoyable Bird Song Walk. We were lucky enough to hear some birds communicating, despite the WINTERY weather!
Robins, magpies and pigeons are very easily recognisable birds.
Some people think it is bad luck to see one magpie, so to avoid any trouble, they salute it and say, “Mr. Magpie, how is your wife?” However, in some countries like Korea and China, the magpie is a sacred bird!
SESSION # 7 – LET US BEGIN.
Before Vanya “came into the room” we had a quick recap on what we had done on Thursday regarding our Bird Song Walk. The boys and girls started to draw a bird that they were familiar with.
Vanya joined us, and she began to tell us a story about parakeets
which can imitate a telephone ringing so well that people think the telephone is actually ringing. By some sort of sorcery, the telephone in the classroom RANG! Could it be those parakeets? No, strangely enough it was a message from the Office!
The boys and girls showed Vanya some of their drawings.
Conor and Amyleigh.
Grace and Joshua.
Natalia and Oisin.
Juliette Abigail drew this beautiful parrot at home.
Great job everyone!
We told Vanya the word for “birds” in Dutch – “vogels.” It is so difficult to pronounce that Vanya said it and we repeated it. We’re trying to learn a new Dutch word every week. She said that the v in vogels looks like a bird flying.
Vanya then shared a really “wow” word with us…something that will go up on our Vocabulary Wall – MURMURATION. It is a collective word for a lot of starlings in flight.
We were wondering why a crow was flying around with a branch in its beak.
Daniel thought it was going to catch a worm and hit it with the branch.
Natalia thought it was going to use it to build a nest.
Pearse said it was using the branch and leaves to make a nest and connect the branches together.
Then Vanya said that there were only 3 animals which make tools and the children had a good guess about what they might be.
- HUMANS
- MONKEYS/APES
- A BIRD…………..but what kind of bird? Eirinn – a crow. Grace – a seagull. Oisin – a robin. Hayden – an owl. Dillon RD – an ostrich. Courtney – a crow.
OUR PLAN: Go outside and look for birds. Pay attention to:
- Body colour and size
- Beak colour
- How does it fly? quickly flapping its wings gliding twisting solo with other birds
- Does it make a sound?
- Can you mimic it?
- We went outside with our notebooks and pencils to OBSERVE and RECORD what we saw.
Before we left the building we saw a metal wall hanging of St. John the Baptist baptising Jesus in the River Jordan. Above his head was the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove.
First of all we noticed an aeroplane moving gracefully across the blue sky.
We saw lots of birds flying. A blackbird was going extra fast and whizzing past us in a flash.
A seagull was gliding overhead, and then it started to flap its wings and flew in a different direction.
Two birds were flying side by side just as if they were keeping each other company.
Oisin demonstrated how the seagull flew. I took a video a great video of him, but we can’t upload it onto this page as it’s too big!
He had our toy robin to compare sizes of the birds.
The big grey pigeon flew onto the roof of the electricity building. There was another pigeon high up in a horse chestnut tree, but it hid amongst the branches.
We made lots of recordings in our books and returned to class to share these with Vanya.
We picked up some twigs on the way. We thought these were the sort of things a bird might use to build a nest.
Conor told Vanya that the pigeon had a white collar around its neck.
Everyone wanted to show Vanya what they had recorded in their notebooks.
Hayden told us that Monday was DOVE DAY. Nobody else had known that. This led us onto an amazing video showing a murmuration of starlings. They moved through the sky like a gentle tornado! They swirled, changed direction and shape so gracefully that they were mesmerising! www.keepturningleft.co.uk
Ella said she thought the starlings might be flying together to a warmer place.
Dillon H said they might be having some time together.
Christopher thought they might be migrating.
Amyleigh said they wanted to share peace.
Natalia said she thought they wanted to get people’s attention.
Pearse thought they were flying together to scare away preditors.
Vanya said they reminded her of an enormous swarm of bees. She used to keep bees and she knows that they are happiest when they are together, so it might be the same with the starlings.
The starlings looked like they were dancing in the sky – maybe it was a happiness dance!
Then dancing led us on to music. People who are deaf/hard of hearing cannot hear the music, but they can feel the vibration. Birds can feel vibrations too.
Oisin showed Vanya his bird moves. She was extremely impressed.
We wondered why other birds do not fly together in such huge numbers and then we realised that starlings are very small in comparison to many other birds. Robins, magpies, blackbirds, crows and pigeons are too big to fly together. Robins would never fly with other birds because it is not a sociable bird. It prefers to stay on its own, or maybe with one other robin. It is very territorial.
Next up was a quiz for Vanya. Some children challenged Vanya to a bird sound recognition competition – Natalia, Pearse, Joshua, Oisin, Grace, Eirinn, Caoimhe, Daniel, Jessica,Christopher and Michael.
Vanya guessed 5 correctly. She made up an excuse that the sound was poor. What a bad loser! A good workman/woman never blames his/her tools!
BREAK TIME beckoned.
After break we considered:
PATTERN – DO BIRDS SING IN A PATTERN?
We know they do because we have listened to recordings of bird sounds.
We thought about things that produce noise patterns.
- Clocks make these sorts of patterns: TICK TOCK TICK TOCK TICK TOCK.
- Church bells peal out in a pattern/rhythm: DING DONG DING DONG DING DONG DING DONG.
- The fire alarm in school rings in a pattern.
- An ambulance/fire appliance, Police vehicle make a pattern when they are called out to an emergency.
- A ship’s horn blasts out a pattern.
- The school bell rings in a pattern.
- A donkey brays in a pattern.
- Lambs bleat in a pattern.
- Music – Natalia violin plucking
- Drums – Pearse
- Guitar – Jamie
- Piano – Jessica
- Ukileli – Christopher (to which I gave a short rendition of George Formby’s “Leaning on a Lamp post.”
- WHAT A LOT OF IDEAS! Vanya asked a very interesting question.
Is there a way that we can see pattern/vibration?
I showed a print-out from a foetal heart monitor.
When there is an earthquake a seismograph makes a print out.
A doctor can hear the rhythm of your heart when he listens using a stethoscope.
Everyone put a finger on their wrist and then on their neck to see if they could feel a rhythm. Yes we could!
Vanya told us to listen to a recording of birds singing. She made a mark on the board every time she heard a bird sound. Then we all had a go. The first sound was a cuckoo.
<< << << << << << <<
That was an easy one to mark in our notebooks, but the next few were harder. Birds have their own language and they communicate with each other, just like we do.
____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ … ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ …
Now we had the task of MAKING SOUND VISIBLE.
Dillon H said. “You have to see it in your brain.”
Vanya said that some people see colours when they hear music.
- She asked the children if they wanted to use the marks they had made in their note books for the cuckoo or the robin. The majority went for the cuckoo (good choice, because it’s easier.)
2. Next step. Draw the marks with pencil on your piece of fabric.
3. Then thread your needle and stitch over the marks. EASY PEASY!
4. Whose idea was this?
While everyone was fully engaged in this task, Vanya had made marks on the board and she asked us to guess what they represented. One child replied, “That’s the noise we’re making.” And she was absolutely right.
Vanya also displayed some musical notes which musicians can read.
Lots of activity:
Maybe too much tension, but a gallant effort.
PLENARY
Conor said it was exciting and fun.
Molly said it was hard doing the sewing, but she enjoyed it.
Natalia said it was nice to knit.
Faith said she enjoyed the session.
Dillon said it was very wonderful.
2 Stars and a Wish.
What were we happy about? We learned LOTS of new things today.
We are getting a little more confident with threading the needles and sewing.
What would we do differently?
Next time, maybe let a smaller group of children sew and rotate the groups.
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It’s time to say, “DOEI!” Can’t wait till next week.
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Vanya had sent a parcel containing larger pieces of fabric for each child. Because of the Bank holiday yesterday it hadn’t arrived, but we were able to reuse last week’ s squares.
Guess what Patsy brought to the classroom after lunch?
The fabric. Nice stamp!
THANK YOU VANYA.